TriDot Podcast .067

The Why and How of Your Pre-race Warmup

Intro:  This is the TriDot podcast.  TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries.  Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests.  Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley:  Welcome to the TriDot podcast.  It's a new Monday and we’ve got a new show with a new topic, and today y'all…today our topic comes to us straight from the TriDot podcast audience.  If you go to Tridot.com/podcast and click on “Leave us a Voicemail” you can record your voice asking any multi-sport question you have, and that is exactly what my friend Richard did.  His question was so good that we decided to take a whole show and talk about it.  So Richard, what are we talking about today!?

Richard:  Hi, this is Richard from Texas.  My question is what is the best way to warm up for a triathlon whether it be a sprint, Olympic, or an Ironman?

Andrew:  Joining us to talk through the race day warmup is Coach Elizabeth James. Elizabeth came to the sport from a soccer background and quickly rose through the triathlon ranks using TriDot. From a beginner, to a top age grouper, to a professional triathlete.  She’s a Kona and Boston Marathon qualifier who has coached triathletes with TriDot since 2014.  Elizabeth, thanks for joining us.

Elizabeth James:  I am so happy to be here.  I would say that I’m warmed up and ready to go, but that might be stepping out of my lane and taking the corny pun that Raines was going to grace us with today.

Andrew:  Also joining us is Coach Jeff Raines.  Jeff has a Master of Science in Exercise Physiology and was a successful D1 collegiate runner.  He’s qualified for the Boston Marathon multiple times and has raced over 120 triathlons from competitive sprints to full distance Ironman.  Jeff has been coaching runners and triathletes since 2009.Jeff, you ready to talk about race day warmup?

Jeff Raines:  Yes, Richard had a great question and it indeed needs an entire podcast to answer.  But I’ve had my pre podcast breakfast, I have my electrolytes here, and I’m ready for the long haul.

Andrew:  Well, I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People, and Captain of the Middle of the Pack.  As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set topic, and then wind things down with the cool down.  Today’s cool down also is actually a TriDot athlete question. So if you guys keep asking good questions I’m going to put them on the podcast every single time.  So keep them coming.  I love nothing more than talking about the things that our listeners want to hear about and that’s what we’re doing today.  So lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

Warm up theme:  Time to warm up!  Let’s get moving.

Andrew:  Nascar, Formula One, and other forms of professional car racing have primary sponsors whose company logos largely feature in the paint scheme of the cars.  Triathlon has seen sponsor decals make their way to the front/center of triathlon kits or sleeves, or polos, but thus far in our sport the bikes only rep the bike brand logo.  If our sport went the direction of the motor vehicle racing world with highly branded bike paint schemes, what company would be your first choice to partner with as your primary bike sponsor?  Professional triathlete Elizabeth James, what are you going with?

Elizabeth:  Man, just one!  I immediately had three so I guess I’m going to take whoever wants to partner with me.

Andrew:  That’s a good strategy.  I like that.

Elizabeth:  Yes.  I immediately thought of Starbucks, Amazon, and Ben and Jerry’s.  Gosh, there’s plenty of rides that are fueled by some caffeine picked up through the Starbucks drive-thru, but that seemed appropriate.  I’ve always liked their logo.  And, what week don’t I have an Amazon package at my door step.  Then, goodness, ice cream is just my weakness.  So I’d say any of those would work well for me.

Andrew:  All fantastic picks Elizabeth.  I only wish that we could fuel our TriDot podcasting with some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.  That’s would be really, really great.  Do they cater?  That would be great if they catered.  They could bring it to us right now.  Coach Jeff Raines, what is your pick for your primary bike sponsor?

Jeff:  You know, I think this is a great question because you see a lot of the, I think they’re called podium polos, but like after the race people walk around with maybe a polo on or something that has all of these brands on it kind of like you said the NASCAR, but you don’t see them on your bike or on their kits during the race.  So that’s a good question.  Good point. I would say that in my high school and college days it hands down would have been Subway.

Andrew:  Subway, eat fresh.

Jeff:  Just Subway.  I had Subway once or twice a week for at least five or six years straight.  I guess old fatuation with Subway is kind of like John Mayfield’s current with Chipotle except instead of Subway once a week he’s Chipotle four or five times a week.

Andrew:  I think it’s safe to say if Coach John Mayfield were on this episode he would 100% pick Chipotle here, right?

Jeff:  Absolutely.

Elizabeth:  Hands down.

Jeff:  And I had to give him a shout out.  But currently now these days after long outdoor rides I crave, I guess it’s the salt, I crave something salty.  But Chewy’s Tex Mex, queso, maybe a margarita.  So I would love their brand and logo on my shirt.  What I think about in the workouts I want those logos on me so I can crave them even more.

Elizabeth:  Yeah.

Andrew:  Yeah, sure.  So for me I thought long and hard about my answer to this question and my first thought was to go with Cheez-Its.  Any longtime listener of the podcast knows that I love Cheez-Its.  I think they’re just the perfect crunchy, salty snack to have with lunch or just after a workout or middle of the day, whatever. And I didn’t want to go with that here because I felt like that was too obvious.

Jeff:  I think Cheez-Its and Andrew have come up in at least every other podcast so far.

Andrew:  But once I thought of it I kind of pictured the dark red bike color scheme. I pictured little tiny Cheez-Its all over.  Once I kind of got that bike picture in my head it was really hard to shake it. Like, the big white Cheez-It font with their brand name on it, it just sounds kind of like a fun bike, right? And I had a hard time shaking that so no matter what other idea I came up with I just kept going back to a Cheez-It branded bike.  I don’t know. That would be fun for me.  It would be fitting for me.  If I look down at it while on the race course it would make me happy and it would make me fondly think of my favorite snack and it would probably motivate me to get to the finish line faster so I could have, you know, a post-race chocolate milk and a bag of Cheez-Its.  So, heck I’ve got to go for it.  Cheez-Its, final answer.  I’m not mad about it.  It would be a great bike.

So guys, we’re going to throw this question out to you on the I AM TriDot group on Facebook and on our Instagram page as well.  So what would you want branded on your bike if you had a primary bike sponsor and your bike paint scheme was just decked out for that sponsor, what would you be going with?  Head to find us on social media and let us know in the comments.

Main set theme:  On to the main set.  Going in 3…2…1…

TRITATS:  Our main set today is brought to you TRITATS.  Whether you’re a seasoned Ironman or gearing up for your first local sprint tri, TRITATS will help you make your mark.  These tough, stylish and easy-to-use race number tattoos make you look and feel like a pro.  I personally have raced countless local sprint and Olympic tri’s where I showed up thinking I had plenty of time to settle in the transition, only to find a massive line waiting to be body marked.  Switching to TRITATS has allowed me to show up on race morning with my focus on the finish line, not the body marking line.  If you have an Ironman race this year, their Iron tats are made especially for you.  Iron tats body mark you for that one key race and include the all-famous M-Dot logo. Friends don’t let friends race with Sharpied-on numbers.  So, as a friend of the podcast, head to TriTats.com and use promo code TRIDOT for 10% off your order.  Again, that’s TriTats.com, promo code TRIDOT.

Andrew:  Leading up to race day we train so hard, we eat right, we sleep well, we taper just right to peak on race day, and wouldn’t it just be a shame to go through all that trouble just to hinder our own performance by not properly warming up on race morning.  So today we’ll talk how to warm up and why to warm up so that we arrive at the starting line fully ready to rock and roll.  So Jeff, Elizabeth, let’s kind of start here.  Is warming up just for elite athletes or should we all be doing something before a race?

Elizabeth:  Andrew I love how you introduce this topic and just framed it by saying wouldn’t it be a shame to go through all that trouble, meaning the training and our race preparations, just to hinder our own performance by not properly warming up on race day?  And the absolute answer is yes.  Absolutely. I mean, you do need to warm up for your race event.  Any event, any distance, and that’s for everybody, not just the elites.

Jeff:  Absolutely and just making sure that you warm up gradually.  You want to even gradually rev up your cardiovascular system to in turn slightly raise your core body temperature and increase blood flow to the working muscles, right.  And hence greater muscle elasticity which yields enhanced speed and strength and power to come forth next.  But also really warming up also helps reduce muscle soreness after the workout, after the race as well and lessens your risk for injury.  Warm muscles both contract more forcefully and also relax quicker after that contraction as well so this reduces that risk of overstretching and injury as well.

Andrew:  So I traditionally have not really done a warm up at all during any of my races whether it’s a sprint or a 70.3.  I did a 5K once where I warmed up a little bit, but that’s about it.  So I hear you.  I know I should do it.  I recognize that it’s good to do it.  So for me and the other Andrew Harleys out there who are like, “yeah I just, I haven’t done it yet.”  We’ve heard that we should so now talk to me about kind of what we should be doing. When we go to warm up on race day morning what should we be doing to get those muscles warmed up and ready?

Elizabeth:  Your proper warmup is going to begin with some gentle exercise such as a jog and that’s going to increase your body’s core temperature, it’s going to increase the muscle temperature, and it’s going to help you progress to those dynamic stretches that are going to help increase your range of motion.  So kind of like that muscle elasticity that Raines was just talking about.  So your warm up should include some of those dynamic muscle exercises that increase intensity as you get closer to the event.  Those dynamic exercises provide that stretch through a full range of motion, but the stretch isn’t held in that ending position like a static stretch would be. So static stretches, or those ones that are held, are not ideal for a warm up due to the stop of blood flow to the muscle.  So for your proper warm up you want to begin with some gentle exercise, your heart rate should begin to elevate preparing you for those harder efforts that occur during the race event, and then you’re going to include some of those dynamic movements as well to really prepare the muscles for the event.

Jeff:  Yeah, I’d kind of like to add that I have my very specific warm up protocol and I think we’ll get a little bit to that later, but I’d like to add that sometimes I’m kind of standing there before a race whether it’s a marathon or even in my wetsuit standing ankle deep in sand getting ready to swim and you kind of look over and you see somebody doing some leg swings or something or maybe the Michael Phelps little arm swing and you kind of think, “Man, I need to warm up that muscle area.”  And you kind of want to– “Oh, he reminded me that I need to do something.” But be careful not to do anything that you haven’t done day to day in your workouts as far as your warmup.  If you’ve never done the bounding drill and you see somebody over there gracefully and beautifully doing bounding…

Andrew:  That doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

Jeff:  Don’t run over there and do that.

Elizabeth:  Nothing new on race day.

Jeff:  Yeah, exactly.  But I like to use the analogy of a rubber band, right?  Maybe it’s been in a drawer in your house for let’s say a year.  You know what happens when you pick up that rubber band and you just tug on it as hard as you can?  That rubber band snaps.  It breaks.  It’s ruined. But if you roll that, kind of roll that rubber band up in your hands gently, creating a little bit of friction and heat.  You heat it up gradually and then you start to tug on it gradually, stretch it a little bit greater and greater, kind of patiently.  Take your time.  Then all of a sudden you can kind of tug on that and take it to a pretty big range of motion and that rubber band will return back to its original shape.  It won’t kind of stretch out and stay stretched out and it won’t break and you haven’t ruined the integrity of that rubber band, right?  And you can use it again in the future.  So like EJ said, static stretching before exercise is out.  We don’t do that.  So we don’t stretch a cold muscle.  It creates minute muscle tears and then after your workout the body kind of uses, so to speak, a certain amount of energy in responding and repairing that tear and not using that “energy” to enhance your fitness from that workout that you just did. So we workout to break down muscles healthfully so it can build back up greater and hence we get gains and get stronger faster from that workout.  But if we over stretch our muscles and we create those minute muscle tears then we’ve defeated the purpose of our original intention of the workout.

Andrew:  So I’ve heard the term muscle activation and you hear the terms muscle activation, dynamic stretching, static stretching and in my mind there’s some overlap. There’s some crossover.  They sound like they could be similar.  So really separate this one out for us. What is muscle activation and what does it do for our bodies?

Elizabeth:  Muscle activation movements will help increase your overall neuromuscular efficiency.  So these activation exercises are basic motions that are centered around learning to isolate and engage a particular muscle.  The movements in general allow for less compensation because fewer muscles are working at the same time.  So incorporating these movements into your race warm up kind of helps tell your brain that “hey these are the muscles that you’re going to be using and needing for the upcoming event.”  Kind of an example here, and this is so cool.  As soon as you wake up in the morning try to make a tightly closed fist.  This is much more challenging than you might imagine.

Andrew:  How early are we talking?  Are we talking like still in bed, our eyes just opened?

Elizabeth:  Yeah, yeah, like right away when you wake up, shut the alarm clock off, think of it like, “okay, make a fist.”

Jeff:  It’s a weird feeling.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, it’s hard.  It’s really hard to do and that’s because those muscles have been at rest and you haven’t activated them.  You haven’t put them to use during the day.  So it’s more challenging than you might think.  But then before you go to bed at night it’s much easier to make a fist. Throughout the day you’ve been working those muscles.  They’re activated.  They’ve been used and engaged.  So that’s just kind of another example to pull on and think of.  We’ve got to wake those muscles up and really tell the brain “hey, this is what we’re going to do.”  For me muscle activation exercises that engage my glute muscles are essential for me before any run sessions.  I joke with Charles all the time and say like, “I’m a lazy butt.”  And he’s like, “Nah, no you’re not a lazy butt, you just have a lazy butt.”  So we’ve got to get those glute muscles to be working for me and I have to be very purposeful about engaging them within my warmup drills so that they get the invitation to the upcoming run session.

Andrew:  So I need this like either on a t-shirt or on a pain cave poster like just in real big words, “Don’t be a lazy butt.”  Because we can literally mean it.

Elizabeth:  Right.

Andrew:  Don’t ruin your workout without activating those muscles..

Elizabeth:  Glute activation muscle exercises.

Andrew:  Before you get going.

Jeff:  Yeah, I love that.  I mean from when you wake up race morning your warmup starts, right.  The neuromuscular, thinking about it, the muscle activation, and then a little bit of walking then you kind of get more into a physical warm up with a little bit of dynamic exercise, maybe a little bit of ballistic.  You do your event, your main set, and we’ll talk about cool down later, but then static stretching you start to see a little bit in the cool down, but definitely it’s kind of gone these days in warming up.  I would add that muscle activation it’s not a new thing, but it’s probably the newest of all of those that I just mentioned and it’s something that is probably overlooked the most, but it probably has arguably one of, if not the most beneficial.

Andrew:  Muscle activation is something that I was never really fully aware of and there was a day…I remember it very clearly.  We were at TriDot founder, CEO, Jeff Booher– we were at his house and I was saying something about how if I try doing a bike session early in the morning I just don’t have the power I need to hit zone 4, zone 5.  My legs just don’t feel very awake, very alive, and Jeff looked at me and he was like, “Well are you doing any leg muscle activation drills before you bike in the morning?”  So then I was like, “No, what are those?”  So he went on to explain to me how the body recruits muscle for a task and the example he gave me was picking up a 25 pound dumbbell.  When you go to pick up a 25 pound dumbbell your body isn’t using all of the muscles in your arm at a fraction of their capacity. A muscle fiber can’t fire at a fraction of its ability.  It either fires at 100% or not at all.  So when you go to pick up that dumbbell your body is only recruiting the amount of muscle fibers it thinks it needs for the task and if you picked it up a few times in a row it will recruit more muscle fibers each time as it adjusts to the weight. So repeating these muscle activation moves kind of cues the body to realize that, “Hey, we’re being called upon to do a little more work than we first thought.  Let’s fire up more and more muscle fibers for the task.”

Jeff:  Yeah, I kind of think of that as almost like electricity.  So your motor unit recruitment is kind of like the amount of “electricity”; I’m kind of putting in quotes– air quotes.  But it’s the amount of electricity that the muscle is utilizing to pick up that 25 pound weight.  So that’s kind of the idea of motor unit recruitment.  That’s the greatest way, explanation of saying that, Andrew.  That was spot on.  We want to warm up to increase our core body temperature.  But these muscle activation exercises are typically one range of motion. It’s a slower movement instead of just going out and doing bounding, which your arms are firing at 100%, your legs, your exertion, your motor unit recruitment is all at maximal force.  You may do something like hip hikes standing next to your bike where you’re just slightly rotating that hip a little bit. It’s a small range of motion. It’s not a lot of motor unit recruitment, but it’s not straight up static stretching.  Now there’s a little bit of visualization technique so you may want to wake up, do your visualization, then you do your little bit of moving, walking.  Then you work into your physical warm up.  Then you get into your muscle activation and then dynamic exercises and then even ballistic.  So there’s a lot going on here.

Andrew:  Two things you’ve both mentioned are static stretching and dynamic stretching.  We’ve already established that on race morning dynamic stretching is encouraged and static stretching is discouraged.  Talk to us about why that is the case.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, I mean we’ve mentioned dynamic stretching quite a bit and that’s a strategy to really improve mobility while moving through a particular range of motion often in a manner that looks like the activity or the sport that’s going to be performed which is why we have mentioned that as being a beneficial part of your race preparation warm up.  We’ve kind of compared and contrasted a little bit the dynamic stretching versus the static stretching and that static stretching, kind of going back to it, is holding that stretch without movement usually at the end range of a muscle.  Raines gave the perfect example earlier about the rubber band.  Researchers believe that static stretching can actually decrease the ability of a muscle to produce force.

Andrew:  Wow!  That’s really interesting because it’s making me realize it’s not just that static stretching is…it’s not that it’s not just beneficial, it’s actually hindering your ability to perform afterwards on the race course.

Elizabeth:  Yes, it could be and that could be very problematic if performed prior to an intense race event because that decreased muscular strength places an athlete’s joints at risk of injury by decreasing the ability to stabilize and control motion.

Jeff: I would even add that static stretching it has a bad rap, but what happens is either people go too far into the range of motion or they’re stretching a cold muscle statically and it’s creating those minute muscle tears.  So what’s really cool is the human body has a defense mechanism so if you stretch a cold muscle, like if I just say, “Hey, stand up out of your chair and bend down and touch your toes.”  You may can only get to your shins and it kind of hurts a little bit.  But if you hold it, in literature I believe it’s 20 seconds.  If you just kind of get to where there’s a little bit of discomfort and you hold it for 20 seconds, it’s a defense mechanism.  Your body says, “Hey, this is a static stretch. Your muscles aren’t warmed up.” So there’s an alert.  “Hey it hurts a little bit.  You should probably stop.”  But if you kind of hold it patiently without going too far into the range of motion after about 20 seconds, I forget the hormone or whatever that’s released, but it’s basically your nervous system saying “Oh, okay. We’re fine.  You can go ahead and stretch it a little bit deeper now.”  But what happens is people rush that 20 seconds. Before a workout they rush that defense mechanism.  Really it’s about 20 seconds.

Andrew:  Because when you’re holding a stretch, 20 seconds feels like an absolute eternity.

Jeff:  Yeah, you’ve got work coming up.  You’ve got to hurry up and get that workout in because you’ve got to shower, because you’ve got to get to work and it’s like I’m not just going to stand there and hold ten different exercises for 20 seconds each and all that stuff. So that’s kind of some of the reason why static stretching is out now.  Lastly, the most intensive type of stretching is called ballistic.  I just want to throw this in there because we haven’t really talked about it.  But if you’re going to progress gradually through that, ballistic stretching is something that is typically done last in the warmup regimen.  You’ve got a good sweat going at this point.  The race start or the workout main set is about to occur. These typically involve multiple range of motions and rhythms.  It incorporates a rhythm aspect and it’s taking those multiple range of motions to almost a max range of motion as well.  Typically those ballistic stretches incorporate some sort of bouncing, jumping.  You’re definitely a higher demand set of activity.  So the order of exercise just to kind of sum it all together…visualization, start off with gentle cardio maybe walking.  Then get into that warm up jog.  After the warm up jog you start to incorporate dynamic warm up exercises kind of like EJ was saying, more sport specific.  Then maybe ballistic stretching if you have a really high, intensive, right out of the gate you’re going top speed, top force.  Not everyone will incorporate ballistic movements.

Andrew:  So right there, Jeff, I think you kind of unintentionally gave us the road map for how we should be doing the order of operations.  The sequence of events so to speak on what we should be doing on race morning to properly warm up.  I kind of want to revisit it.  I want to make sure that everybody catches this because for Richard who asked this question, for Andrew the Average Triathlete who’s never really actually warmed up properly before a race and really needs to start.  We’ve talked about ballistic warm up stretches, and dynamic warm up stretches, and muscle activation.  There’s all these things that we’ve mentioned, but what is on race day, when I wake up, when Richard wakes up, what is the proper sequence for doing these different types of activities to prime ourselves to really rock and roll during that race?

Jeff:  So wake up, you might do a little bit of visualization, right?  Then you’ll start–

Andrew:  And is that just kind of visualizing yourself out there on course, like doing the race on race day?

Jeff:  Yeah.  Is there a weird hill, weird turn?  Hey to the first swim buoy I’m going to be doing this.  Yeah, just kind of waking up that motor unit recruitment visually before the activation series.  But you may want to start off with gentle cardio, walking, something like that just to get the heart rate up a little bit.  Then you jump into the muscle activation, right?  Then you take it to the next level with dynamic exercise, then ballistic.  So visualization, gentle cardio, muscle activation, dynamic exercises, then ballistic.

Andrew:  So everybody take out your pen and paper.  Take out your iPhone.  Take out whatever you need.  Write that down.  Have it ready on race morning and know exactly how you’re going to walk through that sequence.  The ballistic even at the end, the last thing you mentioned, earlier you said that is only for athletes who are walking into a fast race…your 5K’s, your sprints, the races where you’re really going short and fast and hard.  Other than saving ballistic stretches for only those events, are there any other considerations or changes we need to make to our warm up routine based on whether we’re going short course or long?

Elizabeth:  The longer the event, the shorter the warm up and then vice versa. The shorter the event, the longer the warm up.  I did a 50 mile trail race, running race, about a month ago and my warm up was super short.  I mean, I’m talking ten minutes total.  But yeah, still warmed up where as my last 5K time trial, the warm up lasted longer than the actual 5K effort itself.  This is very typical that for those longer events, just by the nature of the event you aren’t going to be going as hard of an intensity.

Andrew:  You’re not reaching your threshold during an Ironman race.

Elizabeth:  Correct.  Yes. Yeah and so absolutely still need to warm up, but the duration of that warm up can be shorter than where you have a time trial.  Yeah, your effort might be short in duration, but you are going all out.  You are at a maximum effort.  I mean, you really need to be warmed up.  Core temperature needs to be up.  Heart rate needs to be elevated ahead of time.  Really need to go in, do some of those dynamic movements, maybe even some ballistic movements to make sure that we have the muscles ready to go.

Jeff:  Yeah and think of it this way.  A lot of people skip the warm up, we know, that time and all of that.  Also they even see like the Olympics.  Let's compare swimming and the 100 meter dash for example.  You know, Michael Phelps comes out of the back room, he’s got his parka on, his headphones on.  He looks dry. He looks calm, cool, and collected. So we only see the two minutes before the event.  So people think, “Man, look how calm he is.  He’s not really wet right now.  He’s not really sweating.  He just walked out, got on the platform, swam his heart out, gold medal, right?”  Then you see all these guys, Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay, and all these guys they come out for 100 meter dash.  They walk out from under the bleachers, they may kick their legs up a little bit, do a couple high knee jumps here and there, then they get in the blocks.  But what people don’t know is that they have been warming up for literally hours. There’s a practice field, a whole other stadium down the street and they– I was a middle distance runner.  My main event it was the 800.  I ran the mile and some B team 4 x 4’s, but my exercise lasted about a minute and 50 seconds.  That was it, 1:50.  But we would warm up about an hour and a half before the gun goes off.  We had a loop.  We’d always do a three mile run.  Just see ya!  Go out there, think about your race.  Go check out– is it a banked track?  Is there a rail in lane one?  Do your visualization, get to know the area and all that good stuff.  Go on your three mile run, slow as you want, see you in three miles.  We’d get back then we’d do hurdle drills.  We’d do some muscle activation a little bit.  Muscle activation wasn’t super deemed important back then, but we would do hurdle drills, 30 minutes of hurdle drills.  Over unders, hops, skips, all these things…hurdle drills.  Then we would do all of our dynamic…our bounding, our high knees, our butt kicks, all those things, windmills, and all those things that’s another 30 minutes.  So we’d be soaked in sweat, but we’d go through the hour and a half protocol and then we would finish that protocol about 15 to 20 minutes before the gun goes off. So for that last 20 minutes, just stay warm, but drink some cool water and stuff like that.  Work your way to the starting line.  So by the time you get to the starting line your heart rate is back down to almost resting.  So then you walk out and then the stands and the people see you and you’re calm, cool, and collected.  Okay, did they just come out of the hotel room and get off the bus and there’s the starting blocks?  No. They have been working hard for a very long time.

Andrew:  So a take away for us as triathletes is for those shorter sprint events, maybe even an Olympic if you’re a fast athlete or going all out really hard during an Olympic effort.  Those shorter races, your 5K’s, your miles okay take more time.  Go through the protocol.  Make sure you’re doing the activation, doing the dynamic, doing the ballistic, and really making sure those muscles are warmed up and ready to go.  But if you’re going out and you’re doing a 70.3, you’re doing an Ironman, you’re doing a marathon, half marathon warm up, get the muscles ready, but you don’t have to go through all those steps and really overdo it or spend too much time to be ready.  So super helpful guys.  Thanks for that answer.  So we’re not just doing the same warm up for every single type of race.  We’re varying it based on the race we’re about to take on. The other variable though is race day weather.  Some race days are hot.  Some race days are cold.  We as triathletes all week long we’re always monitoring the weather and seeing what’s the race day temps going to be.  Is it going to be wetsuit legal?  Is it going to be miserable?  Is it going to be hot?  Is it going to be nice?  Is there any considerations we should make or is there any tweaking we should do to that warmup protocol based on the temperature and the weather on the day?

Elizabeth:  You really need to take into consideration what your body temperature is and what you need to do to get your body warmed up and ready to go.  So in cold events you need to do what you can to keep your body temperature warm.  This might be during the warmup itself and then particularly afterward as well. If it’s a tri event with cold weather, you may wear your wetsuit earlier prior to the swim start than you would on a day that it’s much warmer.  If it’s not a triathlon or one where you’re not wearing a wetsuit, utilize a lot of layers as well to keep yourself warm.

Jeff:  Yeah, actually a lot of people think, “Oh, it’s colder outside so I need to start my warm up protocol earlier.”  It’s colder I need to warm up more.

Andrew:  Thinking because it’s cold out it might take longer to get warm.

Jeff:  And that could be the case, but what a lot of people do is they warm up too early, get a little bit of sweat going, and then it’s still 45 minutes before the race starts and then they start to cool down and then they just start violently shivering because they warmed up too early.  But sorry to cut you off there.

Elizabeth:  No that’s great.

Jeff:  And the whole wetsuit thing.  If it’s so cold out that you don’t want to get in the water before a triathlon and swim just to get out and then get cold because of the cold air, stretch cords.  You know, put that wetsuit on early to stay warm, but also stretch cords on a tree, picnic table.  Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, no.  I’m so glad that you interjected there because once you have elevated your core temperature in the warm up you need to keep yourself warm. You want to be ready to go.  Ready to race.  I mean, I really struggle in the cold and so there have been some events too where I have set up my triathlon transition area and then I go back and I warm up in the hotel room or the hallways of a nearby hotel just to make sure that I don’t get myself into a situation where I have warmed up, I have a little bit before the start, and I don’t want to start that violent shiver either.  On the flip side of things, in hot weather events, do what you can to keep your body temperature cool.  You’ll sometimes see elite racers wearing kind of like ice vests prior to warm weather races.  Little tips like sipping a cool beverage or staying out of direct sunlight might help as well.

Andrew:  Another question I have about warming up on race day morning is just the timing of it all.  We talked about the sequence of events, what we should actually be doing, in what order. We talked about considerations to make based on the weather or your race distance.  But just in terms of the timing, we’re not always in control on what time we’re going to get into the water at a triathlon or what time our corral is going to actually take off if it’s a run only event.  We might have a general idea, but it’s hard to know exactly what time. So if we’re trying to finish our warmup 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes before a race start we don’t always know when that race start is going to be.  So what are kind of your high level, actual practical tips and tricks?  What do you do yourself on race day to really try to time it well in relation to your actual race start?

Jeff:  Yeah, I’ll kind of give just a typical race morning for me maybe and Elizabeth, let me know if you do anything differently.  Let’s just say it’s an Olympic or maybe a half Ironman let’s say. So kind of that race distance, right? I typically wake up about 3 to 3½ hours before what would be my swim start, my swim wave, whatever.  So 3 to 3½ hours out and I’ll start eating as soon as I wake up.  I want to have that bigger breakfast done 3 hours out, maybe 2½ to 3 hours.  It’s kind of hard to wake up that early and just eat all that food so I like to spread that out over about an hour.  As soon as I wake up I start thinking about that morning, that race course.  Okay, where was the swim in?  Where’s bike out?  Where am I in transition?  Oh, wait. Maybe it’s a race where you didn’t put your bike in transition the day before.  Maybe it’s a race morning bike racking, right?  Is it open racking?  Just stuff like that.  I just start to kind of think about that particular day.  The visualization.

Andrew:  What else do you need to do that morning?

Jeff:  Yeah, and I might start doing a little bit of neuromuscular type stuff there as well.  But at 3 to 3½ hours out I eat my 400 to 700 calories and that’s different for everybody. I’m on the higher end there.  But I start the muscle activation stuff.  2½ to 3 hours out make sure that bigger breakfast is done and the physical warm up starts.  Now that’s a long ways out for the official physical warm up.  So what I mean here is I might still be in the hotel room.  It’s definitely still dark outside.  I may just purposefully take the stairs down to the lobby to get some coffee instead of the elevator, but I might go down those stairs slowly.  Just the initial start of that kind of physical thinking aspect. So just little things like that, right? I might take a load to the car.  I could probably get it all in one big, heavy load, but I’ll purposefully take two or three little loads to the car. Stuff like that getting ready to head to that race, right?  Two hours out I like to be heading to the race start.  T0…I heard that the other day and I can’t believe I’ve never heard that. I thought that was the coolest thing.T1 is for after the swim.  T2 is for after the bike.  T0 is setting up before the race.  Have any of ya’ll ever heard that?

Andrew:  Mind blowing!

Jeff:  Yeah, I heard that…

Elizabeth:  This is the first time I’ve heard this.

Jeff:  Yeah T0.  I heard someone say that recently and I just thought it was the coolest thing.  So anyways, two hours out before the race…

Andrew:  So is T4 when you’re done.

Jeff:  T4?…T3 is back to transition to get your bike after the race.  So two hours out I head to the race to T0 and I always know when transition opens.  I like to be there that first minute it opens.  So 1 to 1½ hours out my transition is set up.  Maybe less for long course and more so for sprints and Olympics and maybe higher intensity 70.3’s.  But about hour to hour and a half out I start to do all three disciplines.

Andrew:  So just to kind of pause for a second and recap where we’re at.  At this point you’ve woken up, you’ve had your breakfast kind of while doing some muscle activation stuff to kind of recruit those muscles to wake them up to get them firing, and then after that you’ve kind of done just some light walking, some light jogging even, you know to and from the car.  Taking things up and down the stairs to just get the body moving.

Jeff:  And inside of all that I’m doing random visualization and neuromuscular waking up, thinking of the particular course coming up.

Andrew:  So really you’re just doing things you have to do on race morning anyway. You need to get your gear ready. You need to get your stuff in and out of the car.  You need to wake up, have breakfast, move around the hotel, but you’re building in those warm up activities and the muscle activation and the getting your body moving.  You’re building that into your morning routine and so you’re about an hour to an hour and a half out before the race in transition with your stuff fully set up, ready to go.  What’s next?

Jeff:  Yeah, man absolutely.  Nailed it. So an hour to hour and a half is when I start to do my real physical warm up.  Higher intensity races I will incorporate all three disciplines into the warm up if I can, if I…you know logistics and everything I can do that. So I’ll start off with just that little jog, 10 to 30 minutes depending on the race again and how hard I want to push.10 to 30 minutes super easy jog. One hour out now, I’m typically about there, is when I go for my snack.  It’s been about two hours since I had my big breakfast so I’ll have 100 to 150 calories.  Maybe half a banana and a Gu or something like that.  One hour out I make sure and after that run, the initial run, one hour out I’ll have that little bit of snack and then I start my dynamic warm up, right.  So doing all of my drills and run drills and stuff like that.  40 to 60 minutes out, if the race allows for it, sometimes I’ve had a secondary bike in my car like out in the parking lot.  So my bike is already in transition, but I might have an old road bike or something like that.  Some races provide a little corral of dumb trainers where if you want to prop up a bike on and spin in there, you can.

Andrew:  But if not you can probably find some space somewhere nearby transition to ride just a little bit.

Jeff:  Yep, yep.  Just usually 10 to 15, 10 to 20 minutes just easy spin with a couple little pickups here and there.  So now I’m about 30 minutes out from the race and so that’s when I grab my serving of UCAN. That’s what I’m going to be fueling with and utilizing all day on the bike and so I’ll grab that and start sipping on that and make sure that serving is done about 30 minutes before.

Andrew:  So for an athlete listening, whatever it is they’re going to use on race morning; whether that’s half a Pop Tart or a waffle or a Gu or a little bit of a Cliff Bar just that 30 minutes out, that last chance to get some nutrition, some energy in before the race starts.

Jeff:  Typically I like that to be a liquid source.  I don’t want something heavy or dense that close to a race start. So typically that feeding for me is a UCAN liquid serving.  Now I’ve got all my food in.  I’ve done my main warm up, I’m 30 minutes out and so that’s when I will do the swim warm up. If a race offers that; and we’ve talked about that on other podcasts.  100% always get in the water if they offer a pre-race swim area or something like that.  But if it is not allowed, do some sort of upper body stretching.  Maybe you’re going to bring cords, stretch cords, down to the swim start and give them to your Sherpa or something like that.  But then ten minutes out I like to be done with my warm up and then I’m just standing there staying loose letting that heart rate come down, but my core temperature is still up.

Elizabeth:  Gosh, I love the outline you gave there.  When timing the warm up I always find it helpful to just kind of work backwards from the event start.  Know when your starting time is.  Know how much time you’re going to need for those final gear adjustments or clothing changes.  How much time you’re going to need for each portion of your warmup.  Think about the tasks that need to happen prior to that actual physical warm up such as getting yourself to the race site, breakfast, setting up the transition area.  For the warm up itself I also love how you kind of talked about working backwards and this is something that I do as well.  In the triathlon warm up, you know do your run, you bike, and then your swim. So opposite of what you’re going to do for the event day.

Andrew:  That way the last thing you’re warming up is those swim muscles that you’re about to use.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, you want to activate the muscles that you’re going to be utilizing in the event and so the last ones that you kind of want to wake up are the ones that you’re going to first be using.

Jeff:  Yeah, it’s not random warming up.  There’s definitely a method behind the madness.  Absolutely.

Andrew:  Well, we spent the whole main set thoroughly covering the method to the madness for the warm up, but I don’t want to leave people hanging to you warm up, you finish your race, and then not– just for a moment kind of talk about how you cooled down on the back side of the race.  Again we go through all the effort to train properly and to warm up properly then race properly and we want to just give our muscles a little TLC, a little love by cooling down properly.  So what would you say to athletes on properly cooling down on the backside of a race?

Elizabeth:  So first of all, do it!  Don’t skip your cool down.  I get it. You’re exhausted, but the cool down is going to promote recovery and you are going to be so glad, especially the next day, that you took the time to still do that.  After your race event, your heart rate is going to be elevated and the purpose of the cool down is to help return your heart rate close to resting. So stopping quickly without a cool down can result in lightheadedness, dizziness, fainting.  I’ve seen it at the finish line before.  People that are going all out sprint to the finish line. Yes!  Then boom.  They stop, like don’t move as soon as they get past the other side of the finish line. It’s like, oh keep going!  Just walk.  It can be incredibly low intensity.  After setting your PR you may not have the energy or the desire for a cool down jog.  Totally get that.  But at least keep moving.  Walk around. Allow your heart rate to decrease. That’s still important.  That’s still appropriate.  Then as you’re moving, begin to rehydrate.  Hydration is a vital part of your recovery and as you get your fluid levels back to normal that’s going to help flush out some of that metabolic waste as well from the race.  One of my favorite things to do after walking around a little bit is to place my legs vertically on the wall for about 15 to 20 minutes.  As your legs are elevated blood is going from the legs to the torso.  You know, just nice to kind of chill out a little bit for those 15 minutes.  Then, you know, walk around again.  Let the blood flow back the other way.  That’s also going to help with inflammation. Just overall, don’t skip your cool down. There’s a couple little tid bits in there to help with some of those best practices.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone!  Let’s cool down.

Andrew:  Just like the main set, today’s cool down question also comes from an athlete from the TriDot podcast family.  Listen, I’m always more than happy to put your questions on the air and ask them to our coaches.  So just a reminder, if you ever want to do that just head to TriDot.com/podcast and click on leave us a voicemail.  You can record your own voice asking a question and those actually go straight to my email inbox and I see them straight away.  So today’s question comes from Jeremy, so Jeremy thanks for the great question.  Let’s hear what he wants to know.

Jeremy Warren:  Hi my name is Jeremy Warren.  I’m new to TriDot, about a year.  It’s helped me get to my first Olympic triathlon that I completed a couple weeks ago.  So thank you. My question is since COVID has been going on, my local pool has the rule that you can only reserve a lane for 45 minutes maximum and a lot of my swim workouts are longer than that.  I’ve really struggled with how to best choose what portion of my workout should I focus on.  Lately I’ve been shortening my warm up and cool down to try to get as much out of the main set as I can, but then I’ve gotten some relatively low scores if I don’t do the full warm up.  Should I just go as deep into it as I can and get out of the pool at 45 minutes? Should I keep doing what I’m doing? Is there a better way?  Thank you.

Andrew:  So this obviously is a COVID related question and everybody’s pool situations right now are just so different.  You know, some people are gaining access to their pool, losing access to their pool.  Some people like Jeremy have shorter swim sessions and shorter time slots they have to reserve.  So with everybody’s ability to get in a pool being so different right now, I really wanted to highlight this question.  Because even in a healthy year where there’s not any of the things we’ve struggled with this year, you know an athlete might be traveling or might be kind of out of their normal routine, and if they ever find themselves for whatever reason in a scenario like Jeremy where, okay I don’t have the full hour to get my entire swim session in, whether it’s COVID related or some other reason, how should an athlete handle these situations?

Jeff:  The main thing is to make sure you’re getting the quality in on that main set. So if you’ve got let’s just say a 60 minute main set, but inside of that 60 minutes you have 25 minutes of your threshold work, or whatever…

Andrew:  The zone 4 stuff, the zone 3 stuff…

Jeff:  Exactly.  You want to make sure you get that in.  That is the goal, right?  And swimming is relatively unique in that kind of the only way to get faster in swimming is to swim fast whereas biking and running is a little bit different there; run slow to get fast.  But the swimming you want to incorporate some sort of speed work in every single workout. I have a 45 minute limit currently in our COVID restrictions and sometimes our lifeguards are late or there’s other people dragging their feet getting out.  So yeah, I only really have about 35 minutes to swim.  So what I do and what I tell my athletes is that make sure your warm up is 100% done before the lifeguard opens that door up.

Andrew:  Oh…so you’re warming up on dry land.

Jeff:  As soon as you jump in, main set starts.  And a lot of the main sets progress into higher intensities and longer type stuff.  But anyways. So I will have my athletes do some tubing at home before their five minute drive to the gym.  They’ll do a little bit of tubing, some arm swings, maybe even some upper body resistance– light dumbbells and stuff like that. Then they get to the pool and they’re sitting there and they’re kind of doing the Michael Phelps and staying warm and doing some of those dynamic-types of arm swings.  So then, boom, the pool opens.  You’ve got 45 minutes to nail the main set.  Most swim workouts are an hour, hour-15.  Let’s say hour, but that main set is about 30 to 40 minutes of that. So if you’re warmed up, primed, ready to go you can get your main set done and maybe even five minutes or so of cool down inside of that window.  The key is to just gradually cool down.  Gradually decrease your heart rate.  So you can do that by swimming slow those last five minutes, following the protocol. But if the cool down protocol is 15 minutes and you only have 5 minutes then you’re going to have to continue that somehow on your drive home.

Andrew:  Yeah.  So really make sure we get that main set in and then kind of take the strategies you mentioned for the warm up and cool down to kind of get them in around that pool time.  Really, really smart stuff, Jeff.  Thanks so much for that.  I know a lot of our athletes they love that TrainX score.  They love getting a high TrainX score.  They love getting home and pulling up the TriDot app and seeing that they did well in the workout and when we do this with the workout where we’re intentionally not able to complete the entire time, are we going to see our scores suffer?  Should we expect to see a lower score?  Is that okay? Talk to me about that just a bit.

Elizabeth:  So your TrainX score is going to be a combination of the duration that was completed and then the intensity that was completed.  So yes, by not completing a full 60 minutes in the pool you can say you’re “docked” for that from the get go, but that’s also where I really encourage athletes to take a look at that TrainX score as a reflection piece.  Take a look at your time in the intensity zones.  Did you absolutely nail all of your zone 3, zone 4 that you were supposed to. Was this likely just a lower score due to the lack of time availability, but you know that you did your warm up on the tubing exercises and the dry land stuff and you did still take time to cool down afterward.  So use it as a reflection piece.  Go a little bit beyond just that numerical value.

Andrew:  So if we leave the water and we pull it up and we’ve got a 55 or we got a 60 on our TrainX score, but we walk away knowing we nailed that main set, right? Like we just killed it, we crushed it, we got that in.  We can be okay with that lower score knowing internally we completed the purpose of that workout.

Jeff:  Yeah, and if you were in the water for 45 minutes and you were supposed to do 60, but you nailed that main set, typically you’re going to get about an 80 or above and if you’re just super, super not satisfied with that then I have my athletes manually complete the workout.

Andrew:  Well, that’s it for today folks.  I want to thank coaches Jeff Raines and Elizabeth James for talking with us about warming up and cooling down on race day.  A big thanks to a few of our athletes for suggesting some great questions for us to cover and talk about today and a big thanks to TriTats for partnering with us on today’s episode.  Enjoying the podcast?  Have any triathlon questions or topics you want to hear us talk about?  Head to TriDot.com/podcast and click on submit feedback to let us know what you’re thinking.  We’ll do it all again soon, until then happy training!

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to TriDot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.